1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to sound, specifically to sound recordings which may be provided with annotations to improve communication and/or collaboration.
2. Description of Prior Art
The quality and effectiveness of communication and collaboration are very significant in business and industry. Communication, whether it be within large entities, between groups, or between individuals, continues to be extremely important. Because of increased usage of teams of personnel, which can be either local or dispersed, inter-personal communication and collaboration are becoming critical to business success.
The Internet
When an Internet web site is accessed, typically a home page is first displayed. On the home page there are usually links to additional information, which users can access if they desire additional information. Such access is typically accomplished by moving a mouse pointer over the top of the link and clicking the left mouse button. The information provided by the link is then displayed on the screen. The Internet typically takes advantage of text or graphic linking mechanisms only, so the user must notice and click the link and may miss it if the user is not alert.
The design of and the information in the web pages and the links to other web pages are currently and typically developed and implemented by skilled information systems personnel. The user of the Internet is not normally involved with the creation of the information, the design of the presentation of the information, or the loading of the information onto the web site. The Internet user either accesses the information to gain knowledge or enters information into previously designed web pages, e.g., to order a book from a retail web site. Internet technology does not allow users to easily add information to a web page or provide additional web pages for access by other users.
Telephone Menus and Forwarded Messages
When a customer calls a company for information to solve a problem, or to register a complaint, the customer typically reaches the company's “Call Center”. Before the customer talks to a person, the customer typically is presented with a telephone menu. An example of a telephone menu presentation occurs when a customer calls a company regarding service on a product. The customer is given a series of options and these options may lead to other sets of options. Hopefully, the customer is finally able to obtain the information being sought. Typically, with such telephone menus, significant information is not offered to the caller until the caller arrives at the desired level. The main object of the menu is to provide the caller information which will satisfy the caller's requirement. At this level the caller is able to: 1) hear the desired information, for example, hours of operation, 2) enter required information, for example, leave a message to have their newspaper stopped because they are going on vacation, or 3) talk to a customer representative. The telephone menus do not typically provide useful information at each level of the menu, other than information for accessing the desired next level. The caller may be required to traverse several levels in a menu before receiving value from the call.
Telephone message systems are similar to E-mail in that a message can be passed to someone else with the original message attached at the end. If they are routed to several people or sent back and forth between people, the attached messages can become quite long, complex, and cumbersome, and confusion, ambiguity, and/or lack of understanding can result.
Prior-Art—Patents
U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,216, to Logan, Goessling, and Call (Mar. 24, 1998), titled “Audio Message Exchange System”, describes an audio program and message distribution system which includes the organization and transmission of audio recordings, consisting of program segments, to client subscriber locations. It includes a description for appending an audio annotation to an audio recording. The audio recording consists of program segments, i.e., different subjects that are strung together to form the audio recording according to the interests of the subscribers. The patent teaches only how to append audio annotations to a program segment. Since the program segment can be long or complex, confusion, ambiguity, and/or lack of understanding can result.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,170, to Daberko, Davis, and Bridgewater (Nov. 24, 1998), titled “Method of Editing in a Hand Held Recorder”, focuses on editing messages utilizing a hand-held recorder. It teaches how to insert a second message segment within another message. This allows a user to playback the original message with the inserted message segment, i.e., a composite message. The user's options are limited because they must listen to the composite message; the user does not have the option of selecting whether the user wants to listen to just the inserted message or not.